Stored documents and audio files may be searched in a wide variety of business situations. The user may wish to search a video recording for specific topics, or may wish to search a textual file. Textual searching may be done, for example, for the purpose of reviewing long transcripts and other such items. Typically, search strings are entered by a user and the search string is compared to a stored file. When a match is found, an indication of such is conveyed to the user.
With regard to textual searching, one problem is that misspellings will not be matched. More specifically, if the search string spells a word differently from the way that the word appears in the document, the searching software would usually not find the word in the document. With regard to audio searching, the signal processing is usually extremely complex. This means that unless one employs a super high speed and expensive computer, the searching cannot be done in a reasonable time frame, and certainly cannot be accomplished in many times faster than real time. Thus, it is impractical to search a substantial size file of audio in a user interactive manner. Further, because speech to text algorithms are subject to error, prior known searching algorithms based on the textual output of a speech to text system are typically unreliable.
Still another issue is the use of “hard decisions” in audio searching. Specifically, in most prior systems, a threshold is set that represents a degree of similarity. If the search string and the file being searched meet the threshold, then a “match” is declared. These hard decisions are not optimum in audio searching, due to the large number of variables in search strings, particularly if such search strings are input in audio form themselves.
Another issue which has hindered the potential uses of audio searching software is the fact that the user interfaces are typically unreliable or cumbersome. More specifically, the user would typically interface with the system using a Boolean searching strategy, which often requires that commands be spelled correctly. While the user may instruct the system to look for words within a certain “distance” of each other, such “distance” is usually specified by a number of words, sentences, or paragraphs. For example, a user may instruct a system to look for the word “take-off” in the same sentence as the word “airplane”. However, phonetic searching operates by sounds on actual audio signals, not by sentences. Thus, it is difficult for the software to accurately determine when items are in the same sentence, within three words of each other, etc.
In view of the foregoing, there exists a need in the art for an improved user interface and phonetic searching system that can provide high speed, search results.
There is also a need for a system that can provide a user-friendly and flexible interface into a phonetic and textual searching system.
There also exists a need for a better system of logic functionality for permitting a user to input items for searching in a textual or audio file.
There is still a further need in the art for a system that can search audio files thousands of times faster than real time.